Holocaust Remembrance

April 25, 2017

The butterfly has become a symbol for the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust and for Holocaust Education, and I did a little research to find the source. What I was truly stunned to discover is that there are three separate sources in which concentration camp victims used the butterfly in their art and poetry. A connection that I haven't seen written anywhere, but may or may not have been in the minds of the artists, at least in the painting above, is that the yellow butterfly can be likened to the yellow Jewish star that Jews were forced to wear on their clothing.......a star however that is not about limitations but rather that takes flight and lives on forever, in stark contrast to the goals of Nazi Germany and their desire to exterminate the Jewish people.

Keep reading for some very moving information about butterflies and the Holocaust.....

April 24, 2017

After a sad day thinking about the Holocaust, and doing a little research as well, I had the idea that one could make a project in which yellow Jewish stars become butterflies, as the butterfly is a symbol that has and is being used to represent the Holocaust and in one case specifially children who perished in the Holocaust. So I cut up a bunch of yellow Jewish stars, only the butterfly idea didn't really become anything, so I decided to take my own advice and do a collage with the stars. As I was making this little collage, an abstract conceptual piece of sorts, I started to reailze that how I chose to make the piece could indeed represent so many aspecits of the Holocaust, and that abstract art can be a great medium for discussing heavy concepts, especially with somewhat older children.

So thus was born my Holocaust Education Project: Labels Do Not Define Us. Because education about the Holocaust should state the facts, but at the end of the day shouldn't just be a historic lesson, but rather a lesson in how to combat the evils of human natur, and to dispell hatred from this earth of ours. Keep reading for some insight regarding this project, and how to do it with a group of kids, or even just yourself as I did in my kitchen this afternoon.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah, here in Israel. I realized today that on this day I generally post a photo, which is a message of sorts, but not really the kind of message that is my forte, namely education thought crafting and creativity. So today, as I personally remember the victims of the Holocaust, which certainly did include relatives of mine who did not flee Europe in the early 1900s as did the families of my grandparents on both sides, I am going to make a small attempt to present some ideas for craft projects that might be appropriate today, or any time really when educating children about the Holocaust.

A collage of Jewish stars for Holocaust remembrance day is a simple yet compelling image that can certainly be a powerful education tool. I do not know whether the above image is actually an art piece, or taken from a Jewish museum, nonetheless, we can certainly use it as inspiration for our own projects. Okay, lets get started: